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Chapter 43: Miss me, System?
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The Mech Chapter 44: Birth of a Mech
Remembering that Marcella hadn't gotten back to him about a customer, he called up her number."Heya Ves. I know what you're calling for. The deal has just been completed." Marcella smirked as she said her next words. "Guess how many credits he threw at me to order your mech?""Did you manage to sell it at twenty-four million?""Hah! That's chump change. It's much higher!""Twenty-five? Twenty-six?""Nope." Marcella gestured with her hands to bring up an invoice in the projector. "Look for yourself what magic I achieved."His eyes practically bulged out as he saw that Marcella's customer ordered his mech for a whopping twenty-eight million credits. The huge price figure amounted to a gross profit of eleven million credits if he delivered his mech in time and in good condition. It certainly raised his faith in Marcella's ability. Perhaps partnering with her was the best decision Ves ever made.Marcella tapped her fingers onto her desk, snapping him out of his dreams. "Don't get too exc
The Mech Chapter 45: Mech Trade Association
If anyone first heard the words Mech Trade Association, they'd assume it was a nonprofit trade organization. They weren't wrong, but it deeply understated what a massive influence the trans-galactic behemoth exerted in every corner of human space. They regulated the development, licensing, production, sale and disposal of mechs. Pretty much the entire life-cycle of a mech was in their purview, and they sometimes came to blows in order to enforce their self-proclaimed rights.Even a small, tranquil planet like Cloudy Curtain possessed a local branch of the MTA. As even the Greater United Terran Confederation and the New Rubarth Empire acknowledged the powerful organization's supervisory powers, a small third-rate state like the Bright Republic had nothing to say about the MTA's forceful presence within its borders.The association founded branches wherever there was a sizable population of people. Lots of people meant that at least a handful of them piloted mechs. If left alone, they c
The Mech Chapter 46: New Perspective
Ves personally watched on as the shipping company Marcella contracted brought the Phoenix Cry away. The loaders and bots carefully loaded the dark and red coated mech into a sealed and padded mech container. They carried it back to the spaceport and loaded it onto the next transport out to Bentheim.With that out of the way, Ves returned to his workshop with Lucky. The cat enjoyed the time out, but now appeared to laze away for the rest of the day."You're such a lazy bones."The cat drowsily meowed at him, not really paying attention to his words. Ves scratched the gem cat's chin before sinking down into his couch.Before Ves got back to work, he wanted to rest a bit and recover from his high-intensity fabrication spree. He found it exhausting to constantly pay attention to his emotional mood when he shaped the Phoenix Cry. While he thought his mech successfully radiated the kind of aura similar to the best mechs he saw in Bentheim, it still remained to be seen if it generated more s
The Mech Chapter 47: March of Progress
The inevitable advance of science and technology rendered today's machines worthless and turned tomorrow's miracles into everyday goods.One of humanity's better characteristics was the race's insatiable curiosity of the unknown. Nothing better expressed the rise of humanity better than to track its technological advances. From fire and sticks, the race took a scant blink before it mastered more advanced technologies such as agriculture and forging. A few thousand years after that, humanity escaped the limits of their home planet and spread their presence into the greater galaxy. Each time humanity advanced, it was due to a new scientific breakthrough.This dynamic process of introducing new technologies to the market was not an entirely positive experience to everyone. To the people involved in the mech industry, many companies might lose all of their customers if they progressed one step slower than other firms.The earlier years of the mech renaissance was a wild west, with new inv
The Mech Chapter 48: 2-star Designs
Ves considered hiring a fabricator in order to ease the pressure on his time. If he wanted to advance his skills, he had to keep pumping out designs. If he wanted to earn lots of money, then he had to fabricate lots of mechs for Marcella to sell. He lacked the time to invest in both activities if his sales volume grew to more than three mechs a month.The only problem with hiring someone was that keeping the System secret might be difficult. As much as the System appeared harmless, it was actually a miraculous invention that straight-up defied the laws of reality as Ves knew it. Such a precious treasure attracted covetous intentions, many of whom had the power to squash him like a bug. Letting the System's existence leak to anyone else was just asking for trouble.Another problem which concerned Ves was that hiring someone else to do his fabrication would lead to sub-standard products. A full-time fabricator might be a wizard when it came to working with the 3D printer and assembler,
The Mech Chapter 49: Modular Armor
Working with modular armor posed unique challenges to the mech designer.To visualize the problems the designer faced, imagine being handed a square or rectangular piece of paper. If you were told to make a cylinder out of the paper, you could easily bend it in a a way so that one end of the paper touched the other end. What resulted was a pretty good cylinder with a cutout in the shape of a circle.What if instead of a big piece of paper, you got handed some cardboard instead. And not just one piece, but many smaller pieces that you weren't allowed to bend. With a bit of tape, you could approach the shape of a cylinder with square pieces of cardboard, but the cross section wouldn't look as smooth as a circle anymore. It would look like a many-sided shape that only approximated a circle.The same concept applied to working with modular armor as opposed to conventional armor. Modern 3D printers and armor fabricators could miraculously produce armor plates in virtually any complex shape
The Mech Chapter 50: Hunter
Ves looked at the fifth iteration of the Octagon's radically redesigned armor scheme. He spent a week to come this far. The main changes he made involved setting plates in certain oblique angles that made it easier to deflect damage instead of taking it head-on. The use of subtle angles and a ribbed pattern made the mech appear as if it wore a crocodile's skin.Incorporating such an unusual armor scheme came with a major disadvantage. By stacking the armor plates at an angle, Ves needed to incorporate more armor in the same surface area than if he stacked the plates at a flat angle.It was like using a pack of cards to make a house of cards instead of just placing them side by side. One method maximized the surface area, while the other method increased the density. In order to keep down the Octagon's weight, Ves was required to shave off the amount of SquarePlate armor layers and skimp down on the FlexiPlate."After all this work, I don't think the mech's armor has improved very much
The Mech Chapter 51: Test Pilot I
Captain Caruthers sat in the dark and silent cockpit. The entire enclosed space was isolated from any outside noise. Only the rhythmic tapping of his fingers against the only red shade in the space bounced off the metal walls.Bounty hunting was a tough business for any upstanding mech pilot to pursue. It went beyond the basic jobs like guarding outposts or patrolling conflict zones. In many cases, pilots simply had to wait long hours standing by and only occasionally get into the cockpit to deter a couple of opportunistic raiders.The amount of incidents happening in the outskirts of the Bright Republic was fairly low. Most people thought the nearby systems and asteroid fields were barren of high-value resources. Only a couple of the more common exotics could be found, and small mining concerns eked out a small profit from exploiting them at a low cost."Even a barren hinterland like the Bright Republic can be squeezed of resources if you make it worthwhile enough."The pirates that
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